Bangkok International Motor Show 2018

Motor shows are big business all over the world. Some of the famous are Geneva, Turin, Paris and New York. These motor shows are provided with some standing by the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles (OICA), the world body which provides accreditation to cities wishing to have their own motor show. The, OICA was founded 1919 in Paris, and is an international trade association whose members are 39 national automotive industry trade associations.

Bangkok has that accreditation and is not a ‘Johnny come lately’ with 2018 being the 39th Bangkok International Motor Show.

The man behind the concept of our motor show has been Dr. Prachin Eamlumnow, President of Grand Prix International (GPI) who nurtured and cajoled the industry until Bangkok’s event was of world standard and finally given the nod by the OICA.

The usual mainstays of the show, such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Ford, Isuzu, Honda, Toyota and Chevrolet have been joined by more exhibitors over the years such as Mitsubishi, Porsche, Maserati, Audi, BYD, Hyundai, Suzuki, FOMM, Aston Martin, MINI, Subaru, Land Rover, Jaguar, MG, Volvo and Rolls-Royce and now the Bangkok show has the first wave of the Chinese EVs which really does follow the theme of this year “The Revolution in Motion”.

Of course, as opposed to the F1 edict of no Grid Girls, the Motor Show had the usual crop of “Pretties” or ‘eye candy’ on the various stands, as well as an entourage of the Miss Motor Show girls, whose main function seemed to be to be able to sit motionless, maintaining a smile, and hoping their implants didn’t slip out of their push-up bras.

In addition to the vehicles on display there were some interesting seminars including one on Automotive Forecasting. Looking ahead has become necessary as if your business is standing still, you are in fact going backwards, the rate of change being so fast these days, spurred on by new technologies. Absolute volume growth will be dominated by China but there are new production hubs appearing in Iran and North Africa.

Autonomous vehicles (AV) have been scrutinized and the forecasters LMC Automotive predicting that AV’s will make a real world impact within a 15 year horizon. The first phase will be in 2020-2025. This will be followed up in 2025 to 2030. Looking even further ahead 2030-2035, LMC predicts that the individual ownership model will start breaking down as the sales of autonomous vehicles will rise to counteract the fall in sales of ‘conventional’ vehicles.

With the rise in EV sales, the next step is the Autonomous Vehicle, with some ‘toe in the water’ start-ups such as Tesla being the obvious ones.